Impediments to wheat export from Ukraine

As the clock is ticking for a positive outcome at the Ninth WTO Ministerial Conference to be held in Bali in December 2013, agricultural negotiators are scrambling to find solutions to issues such as tariff-rate quota (TRQ) administration and export competition in order to improve trade flows. The main issue seems to be whether WTO rules applying to public stockpiles in developing countries need to be changed or temporarily suspended as a means to enhance national food security. This paper is based on a note submitted to the ICTSD-IPC Expert Group “Meeting on Agriculture and Food Security – Policy Options for MC9 and beyond” (Geneva, June 2013). It lists the policy instruments impacting on global, national and (urban and rural) household food security – “The Food Security Tool Box” – and asks which immediate decisions the WTO Ministers might take in this field despite the political difficulties such as continued agro-dumping practices or the “land grab” issue. Three such “deliverables” are outlined: (i) regional and “virtual” food security schemes could be allowed to provide reserves to other countries without violating the obligation to “form an integral part of a food security programme identified in national legislation” (Agreement on Agriculture, Annex II, para 3); (ii) TRQ under-fills could be improved by mandatory enquiries into low fill rate situations; and (iii) World Food Program (WFP) and other non-commercial food purchases could be exempted from export restrictions and prohibitions. High ambitions for Bali seem to be misplaced. A more realistic yet real progress could restore the dwindling credibility of the WTO as a forum for trade negotiations.

During the last global downturn, which took place in a period of rising commodity prices, both the academia and global leaders warned about the risk of a protectionist reaction to the crisis, which would in turn decrease trade volumes and deepen the crisis. In spite of this, several protectionist measures were taken during the period. Export restrictions, which comprise export taxes, export bans, export license requirements, and price reference for exports, among other policies, were among the measures more frequently applied. There is evidence that these measures may have exacerbated the food price spike. However, the existing studies do not distinguish between the different export restrictive measures, consider export restriction and import promotion policies altogether, or focus only on few agricultural goods. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap and make a comprehensive analysis of the role of export restrictions and import promoting policies on agricultural prices during the food crisis. To do so, we built a comprehensive database, which includes information on export restrictions applied in the agriculture sector by all countries in the world in the period 2005-2015. Our database includes information on products affected (at HS6 level), duration of the measure, type of measure, and justification. A preliminary analysis of information included in our database shows that in the period 2005-2015, 32 countries took 293 measures that introduced some form of export restriction, that increased restrictions already in place, or that extended measures already in place. The main agricultural sectors affected by export restrictions were cereals, oilseeds, vegetables, milling products, raw hides, live animals, and sugar; and the main measures applied were export bans (28.7% of total measures), export quotas (25.3%), and export taxes (20.8%). On average, export taxes last longer (4.8 years), whereas export bans are more frequently applied shorter periods of time.

Export taxes have been used in many countries. The 2007–2008 food price crisis shed light on export policies’ dangerous consequences for food security during periods of price spikes. Some countries, and Argentina in particular, implemented export taxes for almost all tariff lines in those years.\nDuring the past 15 years, several papers have been written on the impact of export duties and other barriers to exports in Argentina. The area of analysis (poverty, employment, public revenues, and so on) and the methodology have varied in each case. However, most of the literature is based on partial equilibrium frameworks or does not consider dynamic effects for projections of the most important economic variables (such as gross domestic product, or GDP; exports; agricultural production; and employment). Additionally, most of those studies were done in the first decade of the new millennium, when food prices and the evolution of trade and global growth were different from their current context.\nIn December 2015, the new Argentine government repealed taxes on exports of agro-industrial goods, except for soybeans (and their by-products), on which an initial reduction of 5 percentage points was established. Likewise, the government also eliminated the quantitative restrictions that existed for some products until that moment.\nBased on these changes in legislation, this study aims to analyze the impact of changes in export duties and export restrictions on Argentina’s economy, measuring their impact on different economic variables. The scenario also includes the elimination of other nontariff barriers to export. The paper finds that export taxes and restrictions in Argentina do affect world prices and the country’s terms of trade, and that their removal leads to declines in the world prices of the products involved (negatively affecting producers of similar products in other countries but benefiting consumers). Second, the removal of export taxes and restrictions leads to some increases in GDP and welfare in Argentina, but with a variety of effects on productive sectors: those benefiting from the policy reduction increase, but the rest tend to contract. Third, the reduction in export taxes increases the government’s deficit and negatively affects investment, through a crowding-out effect. To avoid the latter effect, another simulation considers the level of a compensatory increase in the consumption tax. Fourth—and contrary to the idea that the elimination of the export tax differential in the oilseeds value chain would lead to a decline in the production of the processed products (such as soybean oil)—the simulations show that when the elimination of the differential is combined with an overall reduction of export taxes, both primary and processed products of the same item expand.\nIn September 2018, in the midst of financial needs, the Argentine government once again imposed export duties on all goods and services. However, given the scope of this work, the implications of that action were not included in this paper and will be included in a new version of it.

Public perception of Canada’s energy trade is skewed towards Alberta’s oilsands and pipeline projects; a look at the facts reveals a more complex picture.Over the last decade, growth in Canada’s energy trade has been nothing short of historic. Energy exports have become so significant that the revenue is now equivalent to nearly $9,000 for every Canadian household. And it is only projected to grow much, much larger. While Western Canada leads the industry, every region — including Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada — plays a key role. Today, nearly every province is a net energy exporter. The energy sector also adds much to Canada’s economy, with value-added and productivity higher than nearly every other sector. When it comes to labour compensation, oil and gas extraction is the highest-paying sector in the country, at more than three times the average hourly earnings in the Canadian economy generally, and nearly 50 per cent higher than manufacturing. It is vital that policy debates rely on accurate information; unfortunately, this is not always the case.The often heated rhetoric neglects important aspects of Canada’s energy trade. For example, the type of energy that Canada trades has undergone a dramatic transformation. Ten years ago, natural gas was the largest energy export but today accounts for less than one-tenth of the total. Meanwhile, crude oil exports have more than quadrupled. Even more surprising to many Canadians, and perhaps even policy-makers, is how much energy Canada imports. Even Alberta, with its vast energy reserves, imports a considerable amount of energy. Alberta’s energy imports have grown faster than any other province and will soon exceed Ontario’s, a province more than three times larger with very little of its own oil production.Trade in energy is also intimately tied with Canada’s foreign investment policies. The majority of Canada’s energy trade is in the form of related-party transactions. For example, Suncor exports oil from its Canadian operations to its American refineries to supply its American gas stations. This fact has important implications for Canadian policy: foreign multinational firms are an important and growing part of the country’s rapidly expanding energy trade. Promoting Canada’s energy trade requires lowering investment barriers and creating a predictable and stable investment climate for foreign direct investment. Yet, in practice, Canada has recently shown a tendency for the opposite, with governments blocking the takeover of Potash Corporation by Australia’s BHP Billiton, and announcing, after the takeover of Nexen Inc. by a Chinese firm, that future takeovers would face even greater scrutiny. Foreign investment in Canada’s energy has already begun to fall, feasibly as a result of these increasingly hostile signals.Canada has a great deal riding on the future of its energy industry — an industry that is as economically beneficial as any other, if not more so. It is absolutely crucial that we ensure our energy-trade policies are based on high-quality and objective information; politicized and emotional rhetoric does not help.

<em>As the world’s third-largest cocoa beans producer, Indonesia is expected to have a comparative advantage and to become cocoa beans price reference. This research investigates market power of Indonesia cocoa beans export for the United State market as an impact of an export tax. Five cocoa beans exporting countries namely Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Ghana, Dominica Rep and Nigeria are calculated their market power as Indonesia’s competitors by estimating residual demand elasticity with two stage least square method. The results show that Indonesia’s market power suffered after imposing the export tax. Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana get advantages from this export restriction. The effect of export tax on welfare is analyzed by calculating terms of trade. The gain from cocoa beans trade depicts a declining terms of trade for dealing with the international cocoa beans market.</em>

How smallholders may contribute to food and nutrition security remains a key challenge in many developing countries. Despite being the main rural actors, smallholders are frequently the most food insecure, given an array of biophysical and socioeconomic challenges that were addressed during the workshop. These proceedings discuss the potential role of smallholders in food security and in poverty reduction. The opportunities and constraints are assessed, by analysing the availability, access and utilisation of production factors. The key message is that enhancing smallholders’ production capacities and their economic and social resilience may have a positive impact on food security and nutrition at different levels. However, not all smallholders are the same, and assistance strategies need to differentiate between smallholders who should be ‘moving up’ into more productive systems and those who should be ‘moving out’ of farming. The choice should depend on the type of constraints smallholders face. The analysis considers, in addition to the role of small farmers as food suppliers, smallholders’ role as consumers and their level of nutrition security. The link between agriculture and nutrition is analysed to understand how agriculture affects human health and dietary patterns. Given the importance of smallholdings, strategies to increase productivity in agriculture are essential to improve food and nutrition security, as is food diversity. Finally, synergies and trade-offs between economic, environmental and social objectives and outcomes are analysed through an overview of the methods and tools used to assess food security on small farms at household level. Models at country level are usually focused on long-term conditions, but short-term analyses would also be welcome. Developing global models to assess food security is also relevant, to include trade issues in the analysis. Models at farm household level in developing countries have a valuable role to play in the analysis of the impact of any policy on small farmers.

Export restrictions, such as export taxes, have increased over the last ten years. In addition, export taxes often occur when food prices are high and/or volatile. As such, export taxes have received a lot of attention in the literature, but these studies tend to examine only a single commodity or country. This study seeks to provide more detail into the linkages among export taxes, trade, food prices, and poverty by utilizing a global economic model with detail on export tax occurrence in agriculture. Results show that export taxes do not have a widespread impact on international agricultural prices, but rather that the impact is concentrated in few goods: wheat, coarse grains, and beef. Removing export taxes would benefit regions currently applying taxes through an increase in production and exports and a reduction in poverty. In other regions, which are major agricultural exporters, an increase in competition of exports in international markets could lead to a fall in domestic prices. Our analysis does not find a significant impact of export tax removal on poverty, except among some export tax imposing countries for which poverty falls as a consequence of the removal of export taxes. These results highlight the need to consider the general equilibrium effects of the removal of export taxes.

Despite the high potential of geothermal reservoirs in Meshkinshahr, we only see the government entering the electricity extraction of geothermal energy because the cost of the Meshkinshahr geothermal electricity is higher than the balanced price of the electricity market and the private sector is disadvantaged for entering it. So, the government has adopted a feed in tariff policy for geothermal electricity to encourage private sector investors. This research is aimed at financial appraisal of Maskinshahr geothermal power plant with the assumption of feed in tariff by the government with Equivalent Uniform Annual Worth, Equivalent Uniform Annual Worth, and Equivalent Uniform Annual Cost methods. Equivalent Uniform Annual Benefit is obtained from feed in tariff of government and Equivalent Uniform Annual Cost is determined based on technical and economic components of the geothermal power plant and macroeconomic parameters. The results of the data analysis show that the construction of the geothermal power plant is fully justified with the 14% reduction rate, but if the investor's minimum expected rate exceeds 54%, the construction of the power plant has no economic justification. Also, if the construction of Meshkinshahr geothermal plant takes more than 13 years and 5 months like the government project, the generation of geothermal power is not cost-effective.

Uganda has undertaken various trade policy reforms over the past 15 years. The size and dispersion of tariffs have been substantially reduced; export taxes have been abolished; quantitative trade restrictions and non-tariff barriers to trade (such as trade licensing, prohibitions/bans, quotas, administrative pricing and foreign exchange rate controls) have been greatly reduced. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model, we implement simulations reflecting the various trade reforms that have been undertaken. Broadly, we find that reducing tariffs would have an impact on reducing poverty especially in the Northern and Eastern regions. All trade reforms would have an impact on reducing inequality within the regions, although this impact is found to be generally small. Depuis une quinzaine d′annees, l′Ouganda a entrepris diverses reformes de politiques commerciales. La taille et dispersion des tarifs douaniers ont ete considerablement reduites, les taxes a l′exportation ont ete supprimees, les restrictions quantitatives aux echanges ainsi que les obstacles non tarifaires au commerce (telles que les licences commerciales, les prohibitions et interdictions, les contingents, la tarification administrative et les controles des taux de change) ont ete considerablement reduits. A l′aide d′un modele dynamique d′EGC, nous conduisons des simulations refletant les differentes reformes commerciales entreprises. Globalement, nous constatons qu′une baisse des tarifs douaniers aurait un impact sur la reduction de la pauvrete, particulierement dans les regions du Nord et de l′Est. Meme si cet effet resterait modeste, toute reforme commerciale contribuerait a reduire les inegalites au sein des regions.

Food security exists when all people at all times have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. Food security is built on four pillars: availability, access, utilization and stability. Food and nutrition security embraces meeting energy, protein and nutrient needs for healthy life. Food systems overlap with agricultural systems in the area of food production, but also comprise the diverse set of institutions, technologies and practices that govern the way food is marketed, processed, transported, accessed and consumed. The food system activities are grouped into four categories: producing food, processing and packaging food, distributing and retailing food, and consuming food. The review paper aims at highlighting the connections and linkages between food sustainability and food security. There are very strong linkages between food and nutrition security, responsible environmental stewardship and greater fairness in food management. They intersect in agricultural and food systems at the global, national and local levels. Today, the main concern for the food and agricultural sector is to provide simultaneously enough food, in quantity and quality, to meet the nutritional needs of a growing population and to conserve natural resources for future generations. A sustainable food system supports food security, makes optimal use of natural and human resources, is culturally acceptable and accessible, environmentally sound and economically fair and viable, and provides the consumer with nutritionally adequate, safe, healthy and affordable food for present and future generations. Changes in both food consumption and food production are important to ensure more sustainable food systems and to achieve food and nutrition security in the Mediterranean region. Since diets sustainability is of paramount importance for achieving food and nutrition security, there is an urgent need to design and implement appropriate policies to improve the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the current food consumption patterns.

The impact of climate change (CC) on food security has been widely discussed in the literature. However, the role of food export restrictions induced by CC is poorly understood. In this study, we take rice as an example and apply a global economic model to investigate the food security implications of CC and food export restrictions based on both self-sufficiency rate (SSR) and household rice consumption indicators. We find that for capturing the impacts of CC and export restrictions on food security, the household rice consumption indicator is much more suitable than the SSR indicator. The impacts of the export restrictions on food security vastly exceed CC effects in over half of the regions. Regarding household rice consumption indicators, the sign of the impact of rice export restriction for each country depends on its position in the global rice market and whether it enforces the restriction policy. The magnitude of impacts depends on the changes in consumer prices of rice and the affluence level of each region. Facing CC, household rice consumption in regions without export restrictions will be negatively affected. Interestingly, not all the regions enforcing export restrictions would benefit from the restrictive policy. Only the net rice exporters benefit slightly, while net importers are adversely affected. The export restriction policy would make the harmful effects of CC transmit from South Asia to Africa and the Middle East. For adaptation/mitigation policies, more attention should be paid to the leading exporters imposing export restrictions where the adverse effects are originated and the more impoverished regions with close trade connections with such regions.

Food and water security: Analysis of integrated modeling platforms

Key sustainability challenges for the global phosphorus resource, their implications for global food security, and options for mitigation

Maize marketing and trade policy in Kenya has been dominated by two major challenges. The first challenge concerns the classic food price dilemma: how to keep farm prices high enough to provide production intensification incentives for farmers while at the same time keeping them low enough to ensure poor consumers’ access to food. The second major challenge has been how to effectively deal with food price instability, which is frequently identified as a major impediment to smallholder productivity growth and food security. Redressing these causes of low farm productivity and food insecurity are major challenges facing Kenyan policy makers. The question of how to reduce food price risks and raise smallholder farm productivity quickly brings us to the appropriate roles of the state and private sector in markets. There is widespread agreement that the state has a crucial role to play in developing strong output markets in Africa. However, there are major controversies as to what exactly these critical government roles are, and how they should be implemented. A good starting point for meaningful discussion about alternative food price policy and investment options would be to review trends in food consumption, production, and price levels, and the forces shaping these trends. These are the objectives of this background paper for Kenya. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the importance of the main staples in Kenyan food consumption patterns. Section 3 reviews production and trade trends of these major staples. Section 4 describes trends in food prices and instability. Section 5 describes Kenya’s maize marketing and trade policy objectives, the rationale behind these objectives, and a chronology of policy interventions used to achieve these objectives. Section 6 summarizes the main findings and conclusions of the study.

The Asian financial crisis led to a major devaluation of the Indonesian exchange rate, macro instability, and the need for a “structural adjustment” program. The real devaluation affects prices throughout the economy and has a major impact on growth, production, deforestation, and income distribution in the Sumatera region. This paper uses computable general equilibrium (CGE) models —a national model and a regional model of Sumatera— that focus on agriculture to explore the impact of a real devaluation on the economy of Sumatera. The model incorporates commodity and factor market linkages between Sumatera, the rest of Indonesia, and the world (through commodity trade). We analyze a possible policy response of imposing an export tax of 5-20 percent on processed wood to discourage further deforestation in the region. The results show that the proposed export tax reduces production of raw timber and processed wood, but at the cost of lowering exports and hence making the macro adjustment more difficult. Given the current situation, it is impossible to predict exactly how the resolution of the current macro crisis will unfold. We model two alternative macro adjustment scenarios that should bracket the likely response of the Sumatera region to the devaluation and structural adjustment program. In the first, we assume that regional investment is a proportion of regional aggregate income (or regional absorption), and that the adjustment burden is shared proportionately between aggregate consumption and investment. In the second, regional savings and investment are assumed to fall more, as the region's trade balance is forced to improve dramatically to reflect the large required changes in the national trade balance.